Serial rapist from Rockland arrested in Maine after 34 years on the run

Gary Allen Irving was 18 when he was convicted for the rapes of three young South Shore women. He was arrested in Gorham, Maine, where he’s lived under an assumed name.

By Lane Lambert

The Enterprise, Brockton, MA

By Lane Lambert

Posted Mar. 28, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 28, 2013 at 7:04 AM

By Lane Lambert

Posted Mar. 28, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 28, 2013 at 7:04 AM

ROCKLAND

» Social News

It took 34 years, but the State Police finally got their man – a convicted rapist from Rockland who’s been on the run since 1979.

Gary Allen Irving, who’s now in his 50s, was arrested Wednesday night in Gorham, Maine, where he’s been living as Gregg Irving.

State Police spokesman David Procopio said Irving will be arraigned in Maine Thursday morning, and that Massachusetts authorities will begin the process to return him here the same day.

He’ll be brought back to Massachusetts to be sentenced and begin his prison term.

Irving has been on the State Police’s most wanted list since the late 1990s. Procopio said Maine state police and Gorham police helped Massachusetts police arrest Irving at his home.

In June 1979 Irving was convicted of the ambush rapes of three young women from Cohasset, Weymouth and Holbrook. All the attacks were committed in the summer of 1978.

Irving was 18 at the time. Convicted of rape, kidnapping and unnatural acts, he faced the possibility of life in prison. The judge who would decide his sentence allowed him to go home to his parents for a week.

Irving’s father was an auxiliary Rockland police officer, so then-Norfolk County Superior Court Judge Robert Prince didn’t consider Irving a flight risk.

“I extended him a privilege, and he ran out on it,” Prince said in a 2005 Patriot Ledger interview.

Investigators said Irving attacked the young women the same way in all three rapes – he parked his car, hid in the bushes, and when the women walked by, he pulled them into the bushes and assaulted them at knife point.

Cohasset investigators broke the case when Irving’s victim in that town recalled a seemingly minor detail – her attacker had a blue and white graduation tassel dangling from his car’s rear-view mirror.

She identified him from the Rockland High yearbook. Irving was arrested at his family’s home on Sept. 6, 1978.